Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google News to shut down in Spain

googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 272 posts

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#81

Post by KobaQ »

kalleboo wrote: post #61
KobaQ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it has to be done. Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator. We shouldn't forget that they're making huge amounts of money by selling others work here. On the other hand Google claims to create "real value for these publications by driving people to their websites", which is often true in the short run. So the publisher can consider allowing copyi…

> Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator Do you also believe Google should remove the excerpts from web sites on search result pages?

If it's the substantial part of the content, yes. But in the case of most of the web search results it is not, so no.

However, you've asked the tricky question. Is it necessary to go to the website or to the original news article or not?

That's just my moral based evaluation, I guess from the perspective of a lawyer it's seen differently, much more strictly.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#82

Post by raldi »

rsync wrote: post #13

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Inter…

You've misinterpreted the story as, "Google News won't be accessible to browsers in Spain."

The actual story is, "The 'Spain' version of Google News won't be accessible to anyone."

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#84

Post by msabalau »

[deleted] wrote: post #67

[deleted]

Any site can opt out of Google News. Publishers don't because to do so would be foolish--they'd make even less money without the traffic driven to them.

If anyone is killing newspapers it's craigslist which ate classified ads, and Apple, which invented this cute little device called a smartphone that's snagged a few billion dollars of local advertising. And of course, newspapers, which all when online, which meant that you had 1000 news options, as opposed to the couple of local papers.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#85

Post by notatoad »

jessriedel wrote: post #8
jonathansizz wrote: post #2

A pertinent quote from the Guardian article on this story: Germany passed a similar law to Spain’s and Google removed newspapers from Google News in response but in October publishers reached an agreement with the company after traffic to their websites plummeted.

Can someone comment on the goal behind designing the Spanish law this way? I speculate that they consider Google News to have monopolistic power, so that even if a fair market in snippets would set a finite price Google News would still use its clout to drive that price to zero by removing individual papers who tried to charge. A mandatory price would counter act this, similar to the way that government mandates to p…

I believe the goal/logic is "we want money. Google has lots of money, we should try and get some of that"

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#86

Post by vorg »

throwawaytiger wrote: post #59
rsync wrote: post #13

Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web site "shutting down in spain". Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had Inter…

I'm not sure how this totally nonsensical and erroneous reading of the post and subsequent comments have hijacked this thread, so at the risk of being patronizing allow me to explain this as simply as I can: Spain passed a law that "forces" news publishers to collect a levy from online news aggregators. Online news aggregators will be fined if they aren't paying the copyright levy (yeah it's that ridiculous). Nor pub…

Do you have any info on why Spain passed that law, such as white papers proposing the law or debates given in their version of parliament? Was it specifically to force companies like Google to shut down, or was that an unintended side effect?

It's common for businesses in a supply chain to each pay a proportion of sales tax (e.g. GST in Australia, and in NZ), so it doesn't seem all that ridiculous for a country to do the same with a "copyright levy" in the media/search industry.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#87

Post by Afforess »

youssifa wrote: post #55

May not necessarily be a popular opinion on here, but I'll state it anyway: Google may not directly profit from Google News, but they still manage to extract value from it. We exist in a top-heavy paradigm where giant servers profiteer off the work of everybody else, capturing a disproportionate percentage of the total value created. It's unfortunate but not unexpected that Google's response is this snarky blog post.…

I disagree. The simple fact that a business benefits off another's hard work does not nessecary deprive the worker of their income. Economics is not zero-sum. Google News drives traffic to news sites that would otherwise be isolated to local communities. If anything, Google levels the playing field, allowing any nearby local news to catch as much traffic as the BBC or NYT. So to complain that Google is profiteering sounds like you want to kill the golden goose.

If it becomes harder to consume the news, people won't bother. The economic pie for news sites in Spain is about to shrink drastically.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#88

Post by KobaQ »

kpommerenke wrote: post #77
KobaQ wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how it has to be done. Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator. We shouldn't forget that they're making huge amounts of money by selling others work here. On the other hand Google claims to create "real value for these publications by driving people to their websites", which is often true in the short run. So the publisher can consider allowing copyi…

Your statement "Google can't be allowed to copy the content or parts of it without permission of the creator" doesn't take into account that "Publishers can choose whether or not they want their articles to appear in Google News" (from the post).

I think I took this into account, but I admit I didn't see something else, which you pointed me to:

>> This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not.

In Spain it's not possible for publishers to allow Google to post without payment.

So, yeah, in this case I missed the point ...

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#89

Post by throwawaytiger »

youssifa wrote: post #55

May not necessarily be a popular opinion on here, but I'll state it anyway: Google may not directly profit from Google News, but they still manage to extract value from it. We exist in a top-heavy paradigm where giant servers profiteer off the work of everybody else, capturing a disproportionate percentage of the total value created. It's unfortunate but not unexpected that Google's response is this snarky blog post.…

Forgetting for a moment that these notions go against the without rhyme and reason of fair use exception, and the reciprocal nature of arrangement in which these newspapers receive nontrivial amount of potentially magnetizable traffic. What I take most take issue with is the shortsighted top down solution you seem to support and advocate for, maybe if these entities can't sustain themselves they should be let to die instead of having government (which they supposedly keep watch of) create life support for them delaying the inevitable.

Re: Google News to shut down in Spain

#90

Post by [deleted] »

wtbob wrote: post #80
rgbrenner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and has offices in Spain. It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do business.

But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use. Lest we forget, Google News links to the articles themselves . It provides a service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN